As part of another blow to the insurance scandal that
Clarín
revealed on Sunday, in which friends of former President Alberto Fernández were hired as intermediaries, it has now become known that the Peronist governor of
Tierra del Fuego
,
Gustavo Melella
, canceled a contract of more than 16 years with the provincial bank to benefit Héctor Martínez Sosa, involved in the irregularities with Nación Seguros, with the business.
On March 27, 2020 - at the beginning of phase 1 of the coronavirus quarantine -, Tierra del Fuego cut the contract with the Banco Provincia de Tierra del Fuego (BTF Seguros) by which it was entrusted with the comprehensive management of the process. of concentration of insurance, property and personal contracts, including coverage of risks specific to daily operations.
Melella notified the bank of "the will of the provincial public administration not to proceed with the renewal of the agreement", after 16 years of uninterrupted contracts, and transferred the powers to the Provincial Purchasing Office.
In July of that same year, they signed an advisory agreement with Héctor Martínez Sosa y Cia SA for the same tasks that the provincial bank had.
In October 2020,
Martínez Sosa was authorized to carry out all the procedures
before the insurance companies of the central administration organizations of the province, the autonomous and decentralized organizations.
Also the Fuegian Collection Agency, the provisional fund for the police, the social security fund, the provincial directorates of energy, works and health services, ports and roads, the social work of the province, the police and various institutes.
Melella claims that when he was mayor of Rio Grande he
fired Martínez Sosa as insurance manager because he had a poor performance.
"I took it out because we had no response from the ART, they did not pay attention to the employees who had a work accident. The support was not good, they did not respond," he told the newspaper
La Nación
.
But when asked why he changed his decision when he became governor, he stated that he did not find "a better one."
Who is Martínez Sosa
Martínez Sosa is a
key character in the plot of the negotiation with the insurance
that the official organizations paid during Fernández's administration.
The man, husband of María Cantero, the President's longtime secretary, benefited from million-dollar contracts with public organizations.
These businesses exploded when, in December 2021, the President published a decree that ordered all State agencies to contract the insurance they needed with Banco Nación's insurance company, Nación Seguros.
What happened is that, even though state agencies were obliged to hire the services of Nación Seguros, they still did so through an intermediary who charged commissions that reached up to 17%.
One of those who benefited most from these intermediations was Martínez Sosa, the broker friend of the President, who obtained the million-dollar insurance business for those who took loans from Anses.
That business reached, as Ricardo Roa revealed on Sunday in Clarín, about $20 billion.
News in development